Gallery: Innovative 3D printing technology at Rapid 2014

High tech for high heels

Materialise NV, an additive manufacturing service bureau based in Belgium, also supplies software for lightening up structures fabricated from STL files. One example of what its software is capable of doing is embodied in this high heel for a woman's shoe.

A melt-down of a different kind

Artist Loan Florea had this piece on display at Rapid. It is a 1971 Ford Torino which employed 3D printing in its construction. Florea, originally from Romania and now living in Illinois, says 3D printed parts are an intermediate step. He uses a transfer step which he doesn't describe to get the liquid metal effect.

Aftermarket remanufacturer and performance part supplier Roush had one of its Ford Raptor 6.2-L trucks at the show. The supercharger housing and a number of other small parts were 3D printed. Though the 590-hp truck is remanufactured at Roush, buyers can actually order a truck with a Raptor package through any Ford dealer.

Super-big, super-fast 3D printing

Spend about $1 million on a giant 3D printing machine and you, too, can print out a chair like this. The ABS fiber-reinforced chair took about two hours to print out on a machine developed by the Dept. of Energy’s Oak Ridge National Lab and machine tool maker Cincinnati Inc.in Harrison, Ohio. The giant 3D printer is based on a Cincinnati Inc. laser cutter. It moves the print head at about 12k in./sec. when it prints polymer parts, say Cincinnati personnel, and is expected to become commercially available by the end of the year. Cincinnati personnel say they are perfecting process parameters and exploring possible applications for the device.

Stick a fork in it

Sculptor Harry Abramson has employed 3D printing to produce several pieces through the years based on table forks. This piece was done using FDM on a Fortus 400 machine from Stratasys. Service bureau Direct Dimensions Inc. in Owings Mills, Md. did the printing.

Not-so forbidden fruit

LayerWise NV, based in Belgium with offices in Conn., makes 3D printing machines that laser-anneal powder metals that include stainless steel, titanium, aluminum, and inconel. This latticed apple is one example of its work. Interestingly, LayerWise doesn't sell its machines, at least not yet. It is strictly working as a service bureau for firms typically in aerospace, marine, medical, and process industries.

Back to Square One

3D printing is a big part of a competition for high school kids called Square One. As part of the contest, kids start by building the printers pictured here themselves. Then they use the printers to make parts for such projects as RC cars, electric vehicles, or underwater robots. Winners are crowned at a competitive event. The appeal of Square One, says one of its organizers, is that it promotes STEM but is far less costly to school districts than the well-known FIRST robotics competition which, he says, can end up being in the $30,000 to $40,000 range.

Additive techniques for micron dimensions

The 3D printed part in this image that Microfabrica makes is not the jaw-like thing visible here. The Microfabrica part is barely discernible in the white dish; the "jaws" are actually a model of it blown up to huge proportions. The firm uses photolithography and electrodeposition through patterned photoresist to additively make super-tiny parts, some of which contain functioning gears and other mechanical assemblies. Applications include munitions fuse assemblies and human tissue samplers like the one shown here. Company officials say it make take 40 photomasks to build up one part. Minimum feature size in the X/Y plane is said to be 20 microns with ± 2 micron accuracy.

Molds and materials

One of the Stratasys technologies in evidence at Rapid was the firm's PolyJet molds (left). The ABS 3D printing material is strong enough to handle short injection molding runs of about 10 to 100 parts. The 3D-printed molds can go directly onto injection molding machines. Also on display were the company's Digital Materials (right) — composite materials made by mixing photopolymers in the 3D printer in specific concentrations and structures to provide the right mechanical and visual properties. A single prototype can contain as many as 82 distinct material properties, all created in one build process.

High resolution in a desktop printer

The claim to fame of the Form 1+ SLA printer from Formlabs is high resolution that can't be had in other desktop machines. So it can print parts like this toy arthropod with super-fine features. Officially the machine prints 25-micron layers and features with 300-micron minimum dimensions. Depending on part geometry, it builds up parts at the rate of between 1 to 3 cm/hour.

How to 3D print reactive metals

Renishaw plc makes additive manufacturing machines that target parts in reactive metals such as titanium. One difficulty when using titanium powder metal is that it can be explosive in the right set of conditions. So Renishaw machines use inert argon gas in in the build chamber rather than the usual nitrogen. The part shown here is a copy of the world's first 3D-printed metal bike frame fabricated in a titanium alloy in one build in a Renishaw AM250.

New laser sintering machine

Machine supplier EOS showed a new direct metal laser-sintering machine called the M 290. Among its improvements are a new filtering system and features aimed at process improvement. Among them are a camera in the process chamber that monitors the powder bed following powder deposition and exposure. Laser power is also monitored throughout the build period.

A welder? No, a 3D printer

The Optomec LENS system was one of the more novel additive techniques at the show. It uses a high-power laser (500 to 4 kW) to fuse powdered metals into fully dense structures by means of a nozzle system that looks a little like a MIG welder. The LENS process sits in a hermetically-sealed chamber purged with argon. The metal powder feedstock is delivered to the material deposition head by a proprietary powder-feed system which precisely regulates mass flow. Once a single layer has been deposited, the material deposition head moves on to the next layer. Importantly, the print engine is modular and can be integrated into existing or new CNC machine tools.

Additive parts big and beefy

Another interesting additive process was Fabrisonic's ultrasonic technique. It builds up solid metal objects through ultrasonically welding a succession of metal tapes into a three-dimensional shape, with periodic machining operations to touch things up. The system uses two ultrasonic transducers and a welding horn. The vibrations of the transducer transmit to the disk-shaped welding horn, which in turn creates an ultrasonic solid-state weld between the thin metal tape and a base plate. The resulting parts can be huge; the piece shown here was done with the process. The build envelope so far is 6 x 6 x 3 feet. And the process can use reactive metals such as titanium without the need for an inert atmosphere because there is now powder involved.

Despite the look, not an ink jet printer

The additive process used by nScrypt Inc. looks a little like ink jet printing, but it isn't. The firm builds its patented Smart Pump dispenser into a positioning system. The result is an additive system capable of dispensing super-fine lines of material. It uses positive pressure and a computer controlled needle valve that provides active valving and suck-back to control flow characteristics. Material dispenses in 20-micron-wide lines from the pump. It is pushed out; there is no jetting. It is possible to dispense small volumes of material down to 20 picoliters. Company officials say the original work on the technology was done for Darpa.

Optimized model geometry

solidThinking Inc. had a copy of its Inspire program running at the show. The software takes a structural design and suggests part geometry that is lighter and stronger than the original. It does so by repetitively running an FEA routine in the background. The example shown here started with the part at left. The final geometry the software suggested is at right.

The Society of Manufacturing Engineers' Rapid 2014 conference and expo hosted a variety of new 3D printing technologies, many of which had nothing to do with ink jets or laser-melted powder metals. Here is an overview of some of the novel applications and techniques on display

Discuss this Gallery 3

There’s a big gap between the popular perception of the capabilities of 3D printing and the reality. For specific tasks and with high-end technology it does have a place. OK for prototyping and for low volume production but currently very expensive and time consuming.